Fenelon a synonym for saintliness. From the French point of view, one
might say, "the sublime Bossuet," "the saintly Fenelon," somewhat as one
says, "the learned Selden," "the judicious Hooker." It is as much a
French delight to idealize Fenelon an archangel Raphael, affable and
mild, as it is to glorify Bossuet a Michael in majesty and power.
But saintliness of character was in Fenelon commended to the world by
equal charm of person and of genius. The words of Milton describing Eve
might be applied, with no change but that of gender, to Fenelon, both
the exterior and the interior man:--
Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
The consent is general among those who saw Fenelon, and have left behind
them their testimony, that alike in person, in character, and in genius,
he was such as we thus describe him.
Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart with a feeling of
vocation to be a missionary. Both times he was thwarted by the
intervention of friends. The second time, he wrote disclosing his
half-romantic aspiration in a glowing letter of confidence and
friendship to Bossuet, his senior by many years, but not yet become
famous. Young Fenelon's friend Bossuet was destined later to prove a
bitter antagonist, almost a personal foe.
Until he was forty-two years old, Francois Fenelon lived in comparative
retirement, nourishing his genius with study, with contemplation, with
choice society. He experimented in writing verse. Not succeeding to his
mind, he turned to prose composition, and leading the way, in a new
species of literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for Lamartine,
and for many others, to follow, went on writing what, in ceasing to be
verse, did not cease to be poetry.
The great world will presently involve Fenelon in the currents of
history. Louis XIV., grown old, and become as selfishly greedy now of
personal salvation as all his life he has been selfishly greedy of
personal glory, seeks that object of his soul by serving the church in
the wholesale conversion of Protestants. He revokes the Edict of Nantes,
which had secured religious toleration for the realm, and proceeds to
dragoon the Huguenots into conformity with the Roman-Catholic church.
The reaction in public sentiment against such rigors grew a cry that had
to be silenced. Fenelon was selected to visit the heretic provinces, and
win them to willing submission. He stipulated that every form of
coercion should cease, and went to conquer all with love. His success
was remarkable. But not even Fenelon quite escaped the infection of
violent zeal for the Church. It seems not to be given to any man to rise
wholly superior to the spirit of the world in which he lives.
The lustre of Fenelon's name, luminous from the triumphs of his mission
among the Protestants, was sufficient to justify the choice of this man,
a man both by nature and by culture so ideally formed for the office as
was he, to be tutor to the heir prospective of the French monarchy. The
Duke of Burgundy, grandson to Louis XIV., was accordingly put under the
charge of Fenelon to be trained for future kingship. Never, probably,
in the history of mankind, has there occurred a case in which the
victory of a teacher could be more illustrious than actually was the
victory of Fenelon as teacher to this scion of the house of Bourbon. We
shall be giving our readers a relishable taste of St. Simon, the
celebrated memoir-writer of the age of Louis XIV., if out of the
portrait in words, drawn by him from the life, of Fenelon's princely
pupil, we transfer here a few strong lines to our pages. St. Simon
says:--
In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the Duke of
Burgundy had by nature a most formidable disposition. He was
passionate to the extent of wishing to dash to pieces his clocks
when they struck the hour which called him to what he did not like,
and of flying into the utmost rage against the rain if it
interfered with what he wanted to do. Resistance threw him into
paroxysms of fury. I speak of what I have often witnessed in his
early youth. Moreover, an ungovernable impulse drove him into
whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His
sarcasm was so much the more cruel as it was witty and piquant, and
as it seized with precision upon every point open to ridicule. All
this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind that proceeded
to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early days never
permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two things at
once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and
all this with a pride and a haughtiness impossible to describe;
dangerously wise, moreover, to judge of men and things, and to
detect the weak point in a train of reasoning, and to reason
himself more cogently and more profoundly than his teachers. But at
the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, reason resumed
her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged them, and sometimes
with such chagrin that his rage was rekindled. A mind lively,
alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against obstacles, excelling
literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that in a very short time
piety and grace made of him a different being, and transformed
faults so numerous and so formidable into virtues exactly opposite.
St. Simon attributes to Fenelon "every virtue under heaven;" but his way
was to give to God rather than to man the praise of the remarkable
change which, during Fenelon's charge of the Duke of Burgundy, came over
the character of the prince.
The grandfather survived the grandson; and it was never put to the stern
proof of historical experiment, whether Fenelon had indeed turned out
one Bourbon entirely different from all the other members, earlier or
later, of that royal line.
Before, however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus snatched away from the
perilous prospect of a throne, his beloved teacher was parted from him,
not indeed by death, but by what, to the archbishop's susceptible and
suffering spirit, was worse than death,--by "disgrace." The disgrace was
such as has ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the
sympathy, and the admiration, of mankind. Fenelon lost the royal favor.
That was all,--for the present,--but that was much. He was banished from
court, and he ceased to be preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The king,
in signal severity, used his own hand to strike Fenelon's name from the
list of the household of his grandson and heir. The archbishop--for
Fenelon had previously been made archbishop of Cambray--returned into
his diocese as into an exile. But his cup of humiliation was by no means
full. Bossuet will stain his own glory by following his exiled former
pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush him in his
retreat.
The occasion was a woman, a woman with the charm of genius and of
exalted character, a Christian, a saint, but a mystic--it was Madame
Guyon. Madame Guyon taught that it was possible to love God for himself
alone, purely and disinterestedly. Fenelon received the doctrine, and
Madame Guyon was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. Bossuet scented
heresy. He was too much a "natural man" to understand Madame Guyon. The
king was like the prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent
incapacity. It was resolved that Fenelon must condemn Madame Guyon. But
Fenelon would not. He was very gentle, very conciliatory, but in fine he
would not. Controversy ensued, haughty, magisterial, domineering, on the
part of Bossuet; on the part of Fenelon, meek, docile, suasive. The
world wondered, and watched the duel. Fenelon finally did what king
James's translators misleadingly make Job wish that his adversary had
done,--he wrote a book, "The Maxims of the Saints." In this book, he
sought to show that the accepted, and even canonized, teachers of the
Church had taught the doctrine for which, in his own case and in the
case of Madame Guyon, condemnation was now invoked. Bossuet was pope at
Paris; and he, in full presence, denounced to the monarch the heresy of
Fenelon. At this moment of crisis for Fenelon, it happened that news was
brought him of the burning of his mansion at Cambray with all his books
and manuscripts. It will always be remembered that Fenelon only said:
"It is better so than if it had been the cottage of a poor
laboring-man."
Madame de Maintenon, till now his friend, with perfectly frigid facility
separated herself from the side of the accused. The controversy was
carried to Rome, where at length Fenelon's book was
condemned,--condemned mildly, but condemned. The pope is said to have
made the remark that Fenelon erred by loving God too much, and Fenelon's
antagonists by loving their fellow-man too little. Fenelon bowed to the
authority of the Church, and meekly in his own cathedral confessed his
error. It was a logical thing for him, as loyal Catholic, to do; and he
did it with a beautiful grace of humility. The Protestant spirit,
however, rebels on his behalf, and finds it difficult even to admire the
manner in which was done by him a thing that seems so unfit to have been
done by him at all. Bossuet did not long survive his inglorious triumph
over so much sanctity of personal character, over so much difficult and
beautiful height of doctrinal and practical instruction to virtue.
Fenelon seems to have been reported as preaching a funeral sermon on
the dead prelate. "I have wept and prayed," he wrote to a friend, "for
this old instructor of my youth; but it is not true that I celebrated
his obsequies in my cathedral, and preached his funeral sermon. Such
affectation, you know, is foreign to my nature." The iron must have gone
deep, to wring from that gentle bosom even so much cry as this of
wounded feeling.
It is hard to tell what might now have befallen Fenelon, in the way of
good fortune,--he might even have been recalled to court, and
re-installed in his office of tutor to the prince,--had not a sinister
incident, not to have been looked for, at an inopportune moment
occurred. The "Telemachus" appeared in print, and kindled a sudden flame
of popular feeling which instantly spread in universal conflagration
over the face of Europe. This composition of Fenelon's the author had
written to convey, under a form of quasi-poetical fiction, lessons of
wisdom in government to the mind of his royal pupil. The existence of
the manuscript book would seem to have been intended to be a secret from
the king,--indeed, from almost every one, except the pupil himself for
whose use it was made. But a copyist proved false to his trust, and
furnished a copy of "Telemachus" to a printer in Holland, who lost no
time in publishing a book so likely to sell. But the sale of the book
surpassed all expectation. Holland not only, but Belgium, Germany,
France, and England multiplied copies, as fast as they could; still,
Europe could not get copies as fast as it wanted them.
The secret of such popularity did not lie simply in the literary merits
of "Telemachus." It lay more in a certain interpretation that the book
was supposed to bear. "Telemachus" was understood to be a covert
criticism of Louis XIV., and of the principle of absolute monarchy
embodied in him. This imputed intention of the book could not fail to
become known at Versailles. The result, of course, was fatal, and
finally fatal, to the prospects, whatever these may have been, of
Fenelon's restoration to favor at court. The archbishop thenceforward
was left to do in comparative obscurity the duties of his episcopal
office in his diocese of Cambray. He devoted himself, with exemplary and
touching fidelity, to the interests of his flock, loving them and loved
by them, till he died. It was an entirely worthy and adequate employment
of his powers. The only abatement needful from the praise to be bestowed
upon his behavior in this pastoral relation is, that he suffered himself
sometimes to think of his position as one of "disgrace." His reputation
meantime for holy character and conduct was European. His palace at
Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of suffering need, indeed
almost his whole diocese, lying on the frontier of France, was, by
mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war as a kind of mutual
inviolable ground, invested with privilege of sanctuary. It was an
instructive example of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes
divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness.
There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair of the
"Telemachus" publication, when it looked as if, after long delay, a
complete worldly triumph for Fenelon was assured, and was near. The
father of the Duke of Burgundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand
between Fenelon's late pupil and the throne,--nothing but the precarious
life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The Duke of
Burgundy, through all changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his
affectionate loyalty to Fenelon. Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and
watchful king, his grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he
yet had found means to send to Fenelon, from time to time, reassuring
signals of his trust and his love. Fenelon was now, in all eyes, the
predestined prime minister of a new reign about to commence. Through
devoted friends of his own, near to the person of the prince at court,
Fenelon sent minutes of advice to his pupil, which outlined a whole
beneficent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed dawning
for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency and of Louis XV. might,
perhaps, have been averted, and, with that spared to France, the
Revolution itself might have been accomplished without the Revolution.
But it was not to be. The Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and
then, within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He died
sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from the dread
responsibility of reigning.
"All my ties are broken," mourned Fenelon; "there is no longer any thing
to bind me to the earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but
two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with
well-grounded apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy
revival of recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fenelon:
"Here was a man who could have served us well under the disasters by
which my kingdom is about to be assailed!"
Fenelon's literary productions are various; but they all have the common
character of being works written for the sake of life, rather than for
the sake of literature. They were inspired each by a practical purpose,
and adapted each to a particular occasion. His treatise on the
"Education of Girls" was written for the use of a mother who desired
instruction on the topic from Fenelon. His argument on the "Being of a
God" was prepared as a duty of his preceptorship to the prince. But the
one book of Fenelon which was an historical event when it appeared, and
which stands an indestructible classic in literature, is the
"Telemachus." It remains for us briefly to give some idea of this book.
The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who suppose
themselves to have obtained a true idea of "Telemachus" from having
partly read it at school, as an exercise in French. The essence of the
work lies beyond those few opening pages to which the exploration of
school-boys and school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of
Fenelon is much more than a charming piece of romantic and sentimental
poetry in prose. It is a kind of epic, indeed, like the "Odyssey," only
written in rhythmical prose instead of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the
"Odyssey," it is an idyllic epic written with an ulterior purpose of
moral and political didactics. It was designed as a manual of
instruction,--instruction made delightful to a prince,--to inculcate the
duties incumbent on a sovereign.
Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the son of Ulysses. Fenelon's
story relates the adventures encountered by Telemachus, in search for
his father, so long delayed on his return from Troy to Ithaca.
Telemachus is imagined by Fenelon to be attended by Minerva, the goddess
of wisdom, masked from his recognition, as well as from the recognition
of others, under the form of an old man. Minerva, of course, constantly
imparts the wisest counsel to young Telemachus, who has his weaknesses,
as had the young Duke of Burgundy, but who is essentially well-disposed,
as Fenelon hoped his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing
can exceed the urbanity and grace with which the delicate business is
conducted by Fenelon, of teaching a bad prince, with a very bad example
set him by his grandfather, to be a good king. The style in which the
story is told, and in which the advice is insinuated, is exquisite, is
beyond praise. The "soft delicious" stream of sound runs on, as from a
fountain, and like "linked sweetness long drawn out." Never had prose a
flow of melody more luscious. It is perpetual ravishment to the ear. The
invention, too, of incident is fruitful, while the landscape and
coloring are magical for beauty. We give a few extracts, to be read with
that application to Louis XIV., and the state of France, in mind, which,
when the book was first printed, gave it such an exciting interest in
the eyes of Europe. Telemachus, after the manner of AEneas to Queen Dido,
is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island he has come, the
adventures that have previously befallen him. He says that he, with
Mentor (Minerva in disguise), found himself in Crete. Mentor had been
there before, and was ready to tell Telemachus all about the country.
Telemachus was naturally interested to learn respecting the Cretan
monarchy. Mentor, he says, informed him as follows:--
The king's authority over the subject is absolute, but the
authority of the law is absolute over him. His power to do good is
unlimited, but he is restrained from doing evil. The laws have put
the people into his hands, as the most valuable deposit, upon
condition that he shall treat them as his children. It is the
intent of the law that the wisdom and equity of one man shall be
the happiness of many, and not that the wretchedness and slavery of
many should gratify the pride and luxury of one. The king ought to
possess nothing more than the subject, except what is necessary to
alleviate the fatigue of his station, and impress upon the minds of
the people a reverence of that authority by which the laws are
executed. Moreover, the king should indulge himself less, as well
in ease as in pleasure, and should be less disposed to the pomp and
the pride of life than any other man. He ought not to be
distinguished from the rest of mankind by the greatness of his
wealth, or the vanity of his enjoyments, but by superior wisdom,
more heroic virtue, and more splendid glory. Abroad he ought to be
the defender of his country, by commanding her armies; and at home
the judge of his people, distributing justice among them, improving
their morals, and increasing their felicity. It is not for himself
that the gods have intrusted him with royalty. He is exalted above
individuals, only that he may be the servant of the people. To the
public he owes all his time, all his attention, and all his love;
he deserves dignity only in proportion as he gives up private
enjoyments for the public good.
Pretty sound doctrine, the foregoing, on the subject of the duties
devolving on a king. The "paternal" idea, to be sure, of government is
in it; but there is the idea, too, of limited or constitutional
monarchy. The spirit of just and liberal political thought had, it
seems, not been wholly extinguished, even at the court, by that
oppression of mind--an oppression seldom, if ever, in human history
exceeded--which was enforced under the unmitigated absolutism of Louis
XIV. The literature that, with Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, the
Encyclopaedists, prepared the Revolution, had already begun virtually to
be written when Fenelon wrote his "Telemachus." It is easy to see why
the fame of Fenelon should by exception have been dear even to the
hottest infidel haters of that ecclesiastical hierarchy to which the
archbishop of Cambray himself belonged. This lover of liberty, this
gentle rebuker of kings, was of the free-thinkers, at least in the
sympathy of political thought. Nay, the Revolution itself is foreshown
in a remarkable glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the
"Telemachus." Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by the
author to reprove and instruct, for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To
Idomeneus--a character taken, and not unplausibly taken, to have been
suggested to Fenelon by the example of Louis XIV.--to this imaginary
counterpart of the reigning monarch of France, Mentor holds the
following language. How could the sequel of Bourbon despotism in
France--a sequel suspended now for a time, but two or three generations
later to be dreadfully visited on the heirs of Louis XIV.--have been
more truly foreshadowed? The "Telemachus:"--
Remember, that the sovereign who is most absolute is always least
powerful; he seizes upon all, and his grasp is ruin. He is, indeed,
the sole proprietor of whatever his state contains; but, for that
reason, his state contains nothing of value: the fields are
uncultivated, and almost a desert; the towns lose some of their few
inhabitants every day; and trade every day declines. The king, who
must cease to be a king when he ceases to have subjects, and who is
great only in virtue of his people, is himself insensibly losing
his character and his power, as the number of his people, from
whom alone both are derived, insensibly diminishes. His dominions
are at length exhausted of money and of men: the loss of men is the
greatest and the most irreparable he can sustain. Absolute power
degrades every subject to a slave. The tyrant is flattered, even to
an appearance of adoration, and every one trembles at the glance of
his eye; but, at the least revolt, this enormous power perishes by
its own excess. It derived no strength from the love of the people;
it wearied and provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every
individual of the state impatient of its continuance. At the first
stroke of opposition, the idol is overturned, broken to pieces, and
trodden under foot. Contempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust,
and every other passion of the soul, unite against so hateful a
despotism. The king who, in his vain prosperity, found no man bold
enough to tell him the truth, in his adversity finds no man kind
enough to excuse his faults, or to defend him against his enemies.
So much is perhaps enough to indicate the political drift of the
"Telemachus." That drift is, indeed, observable everywhere throughout
the book.
We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting Fenelon
appear more purely now in his character as dreamer and poet. Young
Prince Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and AEneas-like, his descent into
Hades. This incident affords Fenelon opportunity to exercise his best
powers of awful and of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas
are, in this episode of the "Telemachus," superinduced upon pagan, after
a manner hard, perhaps, to reconcile with the verisimilitude required by
art, but at least productive of very noble and very beautiful results.
First, one glimpse of Tartarus as conceived by Fenelon. It is the
spectacle of kings who on earth abused their power, that Telemachus is
beholding:--